The Art of Piecewise Hashing: A StepToward Better Evidence Provability

Abstract

The integrity of digital evidence is believed to be the paramount trait in the world of cyber forensics. Cybercrime investigators face myriad challenges in the process similar to accommodating the call for bulk digital evidence. In due course extraction of useful information while maintaining the integrity and absolute protection against data degradation is mandatory. In this manuscript, we propose a novel approach by applying cryptographic hashing technique to only selected significant portions of the digital evidence, so even if the overall hash does not match, investigators could still verify the integrity of those critical sections of the evidence. We put forward two notions in this manuscript; former is heterogeneous piecewise hashing which is a flexible version of the piecewise hashing strategy, and latter is a novel evidence certification strategy which formalizes evidence provability process completely.

Holistic Analytics of Digital Artifacts

“…The authors feel that some additions in the metadata parameters of the source file would result in precise extraction and analysis of authentic digital evidences. Gopalakrishnan, A., Vineti, E., Mohan, et al, (2018) proposed a model for maintaining the integrity of evidence by heterogeneous piecewise hashing and also issuing a digital certificate named as Digital Evidence Integrity Certificate (DEIC) for evidence files. The authors wish to extend the DEIC model to add the attributes like owners public key, issuer public key, the hash algorithm used with precise version and hash of the whole file including DEIC be a part of the information that can be extracted from the metadata for verification and analysis of digital artifacts.…”